Salesforce is the #1 CRM and can help your business to grow. Salesforce implementation is not an easy process. It includes identifying challenges, mapping them into Salesforce, Data Migration, Configuration & Customization, Custom Development, User Training, and continuous maintenance.

This guide is for business users who want to implement Salesforce to grow their business. In this guide we will discuss:

Choose, what to implement.
Select which Salesforce product is a good fit.
How to choose the right Salesforce Expert.
Steps to Implement Salesforce

Choose what to implement

You may want everything in Salesforce As soon as possible. That is the most common mistake cause 70% of the salesforce implementation gets failed.

Just relax and think what are the small things that can add value to your business and saves a lot of time.
These can be repetitive tasks as well. Some most common examples are:

Lead Automation: Automatically generate leads in Salesforce when a user visits your website.
Quote Automation: Send quotes directly from Salesforce as an email to your contacts.
Feedback Email: Automatically send email to collect feedback from customers.

Note down these small processes/steps/requirments in a document. Let’s name it Backlog*. You can also prioritize these. No one can write these for you as **you are the only person who knows your business modal**. You can take help from your other team members. This backlog document will play a major role in implementing Salesforce*

Additionally, you can also add things that you like most in Salesforce. i.e. I really like the Salesforce Dashboard and reporting. I would like to see a report on how many leads are created this week vs from which channel.

We are using notion as a tool to manage this backlog document.

Select the right Salesforce Product

Salesforce offers a bunch of products. Every product come in multiple editions. Additionally, you can select add-on products that can add value to the current salesforce products. And at the end, there is Appexchange, which is an app store for Salesforce. You can install apps in Salesforce as per your need.

Let’s take a breath, You don’t need to decide everything now. For now, just select a Salesforce Product and its edition.

Salesforce Products or Say Cloud:

Salesforce cloud is the base product that you are selecting. Salesforce has a bunch of products including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, App Cloud, Commerce Cloud, & specific industry products, there are only two main products to start, that is Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.

Sales Cloud:

As the name described, it is an all-in-one solution for Sales. It comes with a basic CRM that comes in most of the other tools. If you want to use Salesforce for sales operations, the sales cloud is a good start.

Service Cloud:

Service Cloud by Salesforce is one of the highly rated and most popular customer service software solutions. You can choose this if your business is service-based.

Marketing Cloud:

Marketing Cloud gives you the tools to create trusted relationships. With personalized messages, unified data, and performance insights, your job got a lot easier.

It is more about understanding data generated by your business.

Commerce Cloud:

Commerce Cloud delivers the unified experience that shoppers, retailers, and B2B companies want and expect today.

Salesforce Editions:

Here we are talking only about Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. Both of these come with Four editions:

Essentials
Professional
Enterprise
Unlimited

You can check more about their pricing and features here:
Sales Cloud Service Cloud

For successful and future safe Salesforce implementation, we recommand to start with Salesforce Enterprise edition. Below the enterprise edition, salesforce does not support Customization that you are looking for.
Most of the automation is not supported by Essentials and Professional edition. You can select Sales cloud or Service cloud according to your business requirment.

Salesforce add-ons Products

Salesforce offers a lot of related products that will be charged separately. Some popular products are as follows:

Field Service:

Field Service is an extension of Service Cloud. It can help you manage the workforce. i.e. when a customer orders a new internet connection, the fiber installer will show up, where they are now, where they’re going, and how many meters of fiber is in their hand. It is all managed with Field Service.

Digital Engagement

Salesforce Digital Engagement can help you to connect salesforce with different communication channels. i.e. WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, and Webchat.

Quip

Quip is real-time collaborative documents, spreadsheets, and chat embedded inside Salesforce to transform any business process.

Salesforce CPQ

CPQ Salesforce, or Configure, Price, Quote Software by Salesforce is a sales tool for companies to provide accurate pricing with any given product configuration scenario.

Pardot

Pardot is a software as a service (SaaS) marketing automation platform by SalesForce offering email automation, targeted email campaigns, and lead management for B2B sales and marketing organizations.

In order to efficient Salesforce implementation, We recommend to create backlog before selecting any add-ons. Before purchasing any add-on discuss it with Salesforce Expert along with backlog document. Salesforce expert can suggest you to purchase add-on or provide custom solution that can be deployed on top of Salesforce.

Hire Salesforce Expert (Salesforce Outsourcing)

Salesforce experts can be a Salesforce Partner, Salesforce Freelancer, or Salesforce Contractor.

Salesforce Partner:

Salesforce partner is an agency that is registered with Salesforce. According to their expertise, salesforce provides reviews. Also based on a number of heads it is categorized by salesforce as a registered, silver, Gold, and platinum partner.

Salesforce Contractor:

Salesforce contractors are individuals those work with multiple Salesforce experts. They can understand the requirements and provides a solution as per your need. Generally, Salesforce contractors have a good network from where they can access expert based on requirements and provides a cost-efficient solution.

Salesforce Freelancer:

Salesforce freelancers are individuals those work for a company. In their free time, they can help you with Salesforce. Their expertise is limited to one field. i.e. If you need someone to implement Salesforce CPQ, you have to find Salesforce CPQ Freelancer.

Cost to hire Salesforce Expert

Salesforce Partner ($$$) > Salesforce Contractor ($$) > Salesforce Freelancer ($ to $$)

For a successful Salesforce implimentation,

Mid level business should Hire Salesforce Partner or agencySmall business and Startup (1–10 head count) Should go with Salesforce Contractor

We do not recommand to hire Salesforce freelancer until you are famalier with Software development and project management.

Roles in the Salesforce ecosystem

Mainly there are three types of roles in Salesforce when it comes to implementing Salesforce.

Salesforce Admin

Salesforce admin solve business problems by customizing the Salesforce Platform. they build, configure, and automate technology solutions to deliver business value. Core responsibilities include supporting users, managing data, maintaining security standards, and delivering actionable analytics.

Salesforce Developer

A Salesforce developer is a special type of computer programmer who writes software on the Salesforce CRM platform or another piece of Salesforce cloud technology. This ranges from creating websites to developing apps.

Salesforce Consultant

A Salesforce Consultant works to help business user to meet their requirements by driving client-specific implementation as well as ongoing Salesforce improvements.

A Salesforce Consultant needs to understand the business requirements so they can provide expert help with planning and implementation, or improving productivity and results from an existing Salesforce deployment.

In general, business user intract with Salesforce Consultant. Business users can hire in house Salesforce admin.

Options of Salesforce Outsourcing

Salesforce Outsourcing is a contract in which a business hires another agency, Salesforce contractor, or Salesforce freelancer according to their business need. Here we have two options. Find local Salesforce experts or Find Salesforce experts in other countries.

For small businesses and individuals, outsourcing from other countries offers a big benefit:

Cost is significantly low as compared to local Salesforce Agency
Can give you access to capabilities and facilities available globally
Can also help to make your business more flexible

However, it comes with some disadvantages:

The time zone issue
Different holidays and work culture
There may be some language gap

Start the Actual process (Implement Salesforce)

Once you hired the salesforce expert, discuss things mentioned in the backlog document. For each requirement, you can get more ideas from your Salesforce implementation partner. Let’s discuss with some examples:

Requirement — Lead Automation:*Salesforce experts can tell you that you can also send an automated email to that visitor. You can use salesforce email templates for this. Automatically generate leads in Salesforce when a user visits your website.*

We suggest picking some most important items from your backlog. Discuss it with your Salesforce implementation expert. You both can agree on a timeline. Then give it a go.

Once it is completed by Salesforce Expert, you should test it properly.

Next again select items from your backlog along with feedback and improvement on the last delivered work. Discuss it and repeat the process.

Salesforce implimentation is not a one time process, it require continues mantinace and support. Improve your salesforce implimentation in each ittration and you will get a healthy salesforce implimentation.

Originally published at https://arrify.com on August 6, 2022.

Implement Salesforce as easy as pie in 2022 — Arrify

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